


Bad Luck

by Dracoduceus



Series: Zine Fics [8]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, general sense of unease in the dark, major character death implied, past relationship, supernatural horror elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26903605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: Hanzo had lived at his lonely apartment for a month when he sees a strange man in the trees nearby.As soon as he sees him, heknows.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Series: Zine Fics [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687132
Comments: 5
Kudos: 47
Collections: Danger & Dread: A McHanzo Horror Collection





	Bad Luck

**Author's Note:**

> Be sure to mind the tags. There is nothing explicit about the character death, it's all implied, but I thought that I would warn you. 
> 
> Amazing art done by [Trimmerlist](https://twitter.com/trimmerlist), beta'ed by [IchigoWhiskey](https://twitter.com/ichigowhiskey).

One month into living in his new apartment, Hanzo still hadn’t met any of his neighbors.

He’d seen a few of them around before, heard them through the thin walls and as they walked around outside. The apartment below him was a couple that only talked about sex and weed; the apartment behind him had a Hispanic family who was always yelling at each other to shut up. Occasionally he could hear a dog barking from his neighbor beside him and the laughter of children, but otherwise they were quiet as well.

A few times he caught glimpses of them going in and out of their doors and they seemed about as interested in greeting him as he was in greeting them. If he was lucky, he’d share a curt nod with them and they’d both go their separate ways.

It was a far cry from what he had gotten used to in the past. Neighbors calling greetings from front lawns, over the picket fences. Borrowing tools or sharing food and recipes; being invited to barbecues and potlucks and talking to wives and husbands about life and the goings-on of others in their development. Cookie-cutter houses differing only in the colors of the curtains and the cars found in the driveway or garage. Occasionally the garage was on the other side of the driveway or there was a stone facade over the first floor rather than siding from foundation to eave. 

Hanzo didn’t like to think of the differences—this new silence was refreshing. It was jarring too, feeling as if he was a world, not a ten-minute drive, away from his old neighborhood.

He lived a very predictable life: he woke up, went to work, returned home, cooked dinner, went to sleep. Saturdays were for groceries, Sunday he went to the diner for an early breakfast—beating the church crowd—and had leftovers for lunch and dinner.

Then he did it all again.

His brother called on Fridays but he never answered the phone and deleted his voicemails. Hanzo was never in the mood to hear Genji’s pity or his judgment. He had at first but it got old very quickly.

_ You need to live your life _ .

_ Get out more. _

_ Don’t waste away in there _ .

It was fortunate that Genji didn’t know where exactly he lived or he’d knock on the door like a creeper. He’d have harassed Hanzo.

The mere thought of it was exhausting so he tried not to. 

Fareeha sometimes called too. He couldn’t ignore her calls—she  _ was _ his supervisor, after all—but she rarely spoke of any concern she may have had. Instead when she called, she’d ask a perfunctory “ _ how are you? _ ” and wouldn’t prod too much. Unlike his brother, she wouldn’t ask if he remembered to eat, if he had gone outside for anything other than work or groceries, if he had socialized with anyone outside of work. 

Only once did she break from her polite script, a week or two after moving into his apartment. “ _ Are you  _ sure _ you’re alright? _ ” There were voices on the other end of the phone—likely they had been the one to press her to ask more. 

“I am,” he had told her evenly. 

“ _ If you need anything _ ,” she had said in her low, serious voice. “ _ We’re here for you. I know how difficult moving to a new place can be _ .” 

“Thank you,” Hanzo had replied. “Your concern is appreciated.” 

“ _ Right _ .” The call had ended shortly after. Before she hung up, Hanzo had heard her say, “ _ I tried, _ ” as if she hadn’t expected any other outcome. He wondered if he should have been insulted or touched and decided not to feel anything at all. 

Four months in, Hanzo walked out on his balcony for a smoke. He was not addicted (yet) but he could tell that it would come soon. It was all mental, his mind telling him that he needed the nicotine to relax; he really just wanted to smell the earthy smoke. 

As he breathed plumes of silver-grey smoke into the night air, he watched cars drive along the road in and out of the apartment complex. When their comings and goings bored him, Hanzo turned to his other side. A sidewalk led the way past his apartment door before splitting. Those walkways ran parallel to a dark, wooded area that blocked off another residential space. The trees and brush were so thick that no sign of the streetlights on the other side made it through. 

Especially at night, that area was pitch black, made eerier by the floodlights that cast the path into light—and the trees even more into shadow. It was a visceral kind of fear when encountering the unknown and Hanzo had no interest in addressing  _ this _ unknown. 

He wasn’t sure what led to him looking that way—perhaps simple chance, some kind of bad luck—but he did and saw someone standing in the trees. He was just a dark blot among the dark trees, highlighted by the floodlight on the nearby building. 

The man was smoking as well, the red cherry of his cigar flaring as he took a breath in; it faded as he exhaled. Silver-grey smoke drifted among the dark trees and brush. 

Hanzo looked away, feeling suddenly cold. He snuffed out the cigarette on the balcony and took the butt back inside with him. 

* * *

Every once in a while he sees the man. He’s always standing off the path, in the treeline. One might think that he was simply standing a polite distance away from nearby doors and windows, but he was much farther than necessary. Hanzo never saw him clearly, always seeing him at night, but there was something familiar about the way he held himself, something familiar about the way he stood with his weight on his right leg while he smoked.

He tried not to think too much about it.

Weeks passed. Sometimes he saw the man in the early morning as he left for work; sometimes he saw him in the early evening as he returned. Those times, Hanzo could see that he wore jeans and a brown suede jacket, though in the cool fall air it was hard to tell what was under it.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Hanzo promised himself that he wouldn’t look again but every time he found that his eyes would move, pulled like a compass needle to rest on the man. As if his eyes could sense the danger and wanted to warn him.

Hanzo hoped that the attention he paid to the man wouldn’t get him in trouble.

One afternoon, after taking the day off, Hanzo caught sight of the man walking along the sidewalk outside of his apartment. It was an unseasonably warm day so he wasn’t wearing the jacket that Hanzo sometimes saw him in, just a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up; he wasn’t smoking either, but there was a cigar in his breast pocket.

The man gave no sign that he knew that Hanzo was watching—and he  _ shouldn’t _ know, because Hanzo was peeking out through the blinds of his windows—but it almost felt to Hanzo like he knew.

Somehow.

As Hanzo watched behind the blinds, the man walked down the length of the building and down past the parking lot. Soon he was out of Hanzo’s sight and he shook his head. He must really be going crazy if he was stalking a complete stranger and jumping at ghosts. 

* * *

Hanzo puffed through another cigarette. He wasn’t one to chain smoke but something in him craved the nicotine and the smell of fresh cigarette smoke. It wasn’t addiction just yet (emphasis on  _ yet _ ) but it was a quick way to calm down.

He took another deep breath, feeling smoke filling his lungs. The cherry at the end of the cigarette flared and crackled closer to where his fingers pinched the filter. 

Genji had stolen Fareeha’s phone, likely figuring out that Hanzo was still answering her calls. As soon as Hanzo answered, Genji had immediately begun lecturing him. 

That Hanzo had been worrying him. 

That it was cruel and irresponsible for Hanzo to ignore his calls. Didn’t Hanzo know that Genji loved him? Was concerned for him? 

That Hanzo was selfish for not wanting to speak to his brother. 

Hanzo took another long drag of his cigarette. He’d never understood the term until that moment; it felt like the nicotine-laded smoke was dragged through his mouth and throat and into his lungs, scouring everything away in a strange kind of painless haze. He imagined that when he blew out, the silvery smoke was the memories of Genji’s scolding. 

They were not particularly close as adults. As boys they were inseparable but they grew apart in high school; by college, Hanzo had almost forgotten that he had a brother. It was an unfortunate bit of serendipity that Genji knew Fareeha. 

Once word had gotten out that Hanzo and Genji were related but estranged, they had been pressured to reconnect. Genji had been more enthused to do so than Hanzo. Now he was insufferable, thinking that somehow Hanzo couldn’t take care of himself. 

He didn’t seem to understand that they were different men now, were no longer the same as when they were boys. 

Hanzo took another long drag of the cigarette, swallowing the words he wanted to say; when he breathed out, he imagined that the smoke was him letting go of the conversation. 

He wished that it had worked. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see movement. Turning, he watched the man follow the path to his usual place. Perhaps Hanzo had been wrong; perhaps the man simply lived in the next building over. 

He watched the man turn off the path and walk into his usual spot just inside the treeline. The man, dressed in his brown suede jacket once more, turned back around and fished out the cigar in his breast pocket. Hanzo watched him light the end with a silver zippo lighter, the orange flame catching on his face. He was far away but Hanzo thought that he caught the man looking at him. 

It wasn’t dark yet despite the shadows in the trees and Hanzo gave up pretending not to look. Hanzo couldn’t quite tell the colors, but the man had dark eyes and dark brown hair. He wore it long and artfully tousled, tied loosely behind his head; he must have been walking around for a while, because there were flyaway wisps that were escaping the loose tie that held it behind his head. 

There was something familiar in his face, something strangely friendly. Despite not looking at Hanzo—definitely not looking, because he had turned his head, craning his neck as if looking at something beyond the next building that Hanzo couldn’t see—he felt watched.

Hanzo checked the cigarette and took one last restrained drag. Smoke escaped his lips as he cursed when the heat burned his lips and fingertips. He snuffed the butt out and took it inside with him, trying not to look back at the man in the trees. 

He felt his eyes on him though, and hurried to close the sliding glass door and the blinds. Done, he pressed his face against the wall next to the door, unable to say why he felt so uncomfortable; to do so would be admitting to believing something impossible. 

The supernatural didn’t exist but Hanzo swore— _ swore _ —that he could still feel the man’s eyes on him through the blinds and the wall between them.

* * *

Hanzo woke up, at first unsure why. 

Groggily, he stared up at the ceiling, at the red and blue lights that danced soundlessly overhead. Later he would blame his tiredness for not realizing sooner that this was an unusual sight. 

Alarmed, he sat up and looked out the window. He could see the shapeless figures of people standing on the sidewalk near the parking lot. The lights that had danced on the ceiling of his bedroom had come from the police cars loitering in the road. 

Just beyond, just out of view, Hanzo could see the large rectangular back and sides of a fire truck. 

Curious despite his exhaustion, he got up—waiting for a moment for the dizziness to pass and the apartment to stop swaying—he immediately tripped over an empty bottle next to his bed. It clicked against other bottles and Hanzo cursed to himself, stooping to pick them up. 

When he walked into the kitchen and put the bottles in the recycling bin, he found that he had forgotten to close the blinds to the sliding glass door and his second-story balcony. Shaking his head, he stumbled in the dark to the door and fumbled with the latch. 

With the door open, Hanzo stepped barefoot to the dusty balcony. Now he could hear the muted  _ whoop _ of sirens, the crackle of emergency radios. The dark shapes of police officers wound between cars and he followed them, like lines of ants, to the next building over. If he craned his head, he could see another fire truck, parked ridiculously on the open lawn of the courtyard in the next building. 

There were other witnesses, clustered together down the sidewalk at the end of his building, but none were close enough for him to ask what was going on. The cold bit his arms so he ducked inside for a jacket before shuffling back out, leaning on his rickety railing as he tried to figure out what was going on. 

He saw the strange man again, smoking on the sidewalk just in front of his balcony. This close, he could smell the smoke. Worse, he  _ knew _ that smell, could name the type. Capa Flor. 

Unbidden, his mind continued the train of thought. It was a style and brand from Central America, was described as “spicy” and “bold”. To Hanzo, it smelled the same as almost every cigar, but he had been told that the Capa Flor brand was sublime, smooth. There was something special about it, some kind of old memory.

He’d never asked but sometimes, like now, he wished that he had. 

Forgetting himself, Hanzo asked the man, “What’s happening?” 

The man looked around and then up at him, pulling the hand with the cigar away to flash a whiskery smile at Hanzo. His hair and beard were tousled again, as if he had rolled out of bed to watch what was happening too, and though Hanzo couldn’t see his shirt beneath his brown suede jacket, Hanzo could see that he wore a pair of boots with their laces untied and a pair of sweatpants decorated with cowboys and bucking broncos. 

“The building caught fire,” the man said with a hint of an accent like he had stepped out of an old Western. 

Hanzo was too surprised to consider the implications of speaking to the man. He turned and his eyes found the fire trucks again. All of a sudden, the one in the next building’s courtyard made sense. 

“I think it’s only one or two units,” the man continued. 

Now Hanzo noticed the smoke rising above the roof. He was surprised that he didn’t smell the smoke, but perhaps that was because of the man smoking in front of his balcony. 

“Smoke?” the man asked Hanzo. He held a cigar box, large enough to hold three or four, in his hand as if in offering. It was leather around a leather canister and Hanzo could see that it was engraved, or perhaps burned, with the initials JM. 

For a long moment, Hanzo considered it. He sighed and smelled alcohol. The world felt different this early in the morning. “No, thank you,” he told the man who gave him a roguish grin. 

They both looked back at the building and the fire trucks. Emergency personnel were scurrying around with increased intensity. A moment later, an enormous burst of smoke rose in the air and the watchers further down the sidewalk murmured to themselves in alarm. 

Below him, the man shook his head. “Bad luck,” he said as he turned and began walking away. Hanzo watched him follow the sidewalk to the end and then continue on into the trees. This time he didn’t stop at his customary spot and disappeared into the darkness of the trees. 

Hanzo turned back and watched the great plumes of silver-grey smoke rising. It formed hazy clouds that lingered in the air, catching the flashing blue and red lights. He leaned against his rickety railing and tried not to think of the man with his cowboy pajamas walking into the trees. 

* * *

For a while, he didn’t see the man again. 

He had been right though, about the fire. A few days after the incident, Hanzo went on a walk to the courtyard of the building. There were still signs of the fire that Hanzo could see. The sidewalk was stained with soot and there were channels drawn in the grass from the water from the hoses; there were deep gouges in the middle of the courtyard from the emergency vehicles pulling up close. 

It was easy to see which buildings had been affected: their doorways and windows were marked with fire. Only two units were affected, with the roof of the upper story unit sagging low.

Hanzo wondered what other damage had been done to walls and attics. “Bad luck,” he whispered to himself in the early winter air, his breath puffing out like silvery smoke. He shivered, told himself that it was from the cold and not from the memory of the man, and walked quickly back to his apartment. 

He kept his head tucked down so that he wouldn’t see if the man was standing in the trees, and closed the door behind him.

* * *

Halfway through winter, Hanzo was sent home early due to a snowstorm.

“Drive safely,” Fareeha told him sternly. 

“I will,” he promised as he wound his scarf around his head and neck. 

Fareeha looked down at his desk, at the empty picture frames. As ever, she didn’t say anything about them directly, but she looked at Hanzo intently as he pulled on his heavy coat. “You’ll be okay?” she asked.

Though he was tired with people asking, he appreciated that she always allowed him the option to “misinterpret” her. “The truck will be fine,” Hanzo said. “I’m more worried about other drivers.” 

Despite her clear worry, she barked a laugh. “All drivers are terrible,” she said. “Even in snowstorms. Be safe, okay?” 

Hanzo smiled despite himself. He was tired of everyone asking if he was okay, how he was holding up, tip-toeing around the elephant in the room. They all meant well but somehow Fareeha’s concern and well wishes were much easier to accept than even his brother’s. 

“Thank you, Fareeha,” he told her and she smiled at him. 

“Get out of here before it gets worse.” 

Steeling himself against the cold and the snow, Hanzo trudged out into the parking lot. 

It took him three times as long to get home as typical, but he did run into two fallen trees and one car that had stalled out in the middle of the road, forcing everyone to drive around them as they struggled to dig their car out. Hanzo considered stopping to help but they were situated poorly, on a hill, so that once he finished helping them, he’d need help, himself. 

Another truck had stopped to help so Hanzo felt better moving on. 

When he finally made it home, he was ready to lock himself in his apartment and take a nice, long soak. He was just getting out of his car when he realized that there was something wrong. 

He found the strange man, again on the sidewalk near Hanzo’s apartment. This time he was watching another spectacle unfold, as people scurried around a tree that had fallen over a row of parked cars. It seemed that the branches had propped it up somewhat so the cars weren’t  _ crushed _ , but other branches had pierced each windshield. 

The man was smoking again and he wore dark brown gloves. He had a dark red scarf around his neck that was decorated with geometric designs in gold; the fringed ends had popped out of his coat like grasping hands and reaching fingers. 

“Bad luck,” the man said as Hanzo walked along the snowy sidewalk. “Snow and ice must’a been too much for it.” 

Hanzo looked back at the cars and tried not to look back at the man. “That’s a shame.” 

The man laughed. It didn’t sound very nice. “Bad luck,” he repeated.

Quickly, Hanzo turned and shuffled through the snow to his apartment. 

* * *

Winter faded into spring. 

He still saw the man. Usually he was in his spot in the trees; sometimes he was walking around the complex. 

In late December, a car slid on a patch of ice and crashed into a tree. The driver was not hurt but the car’s front bumper had been a crumpled mess. “Bad luck,” the man said as if greeting Hanzo. “With this funky weather, I bet there’s lots of ice patches nobody sees.” 

A water pipe broke in February, flooding the area with (thankfully clean) water. “Bad luck,” the man said when Hanzo walked along the path to watch the bubbling liquid. 

By March, Hanzo was used to seeing him around. He’d given up his caution and nodded in greeting to the man, though his unease still lingered. The man would usually nod back. Sometimes he’d tip the brim of an imaginary hat at Hanzo; sometimes he’d respond with “howdy”. 

May marked The Anniversary. Hanzo had yet to be able to put a name to the event. Only Fareeha, bless her heart, didn’t bring it up though her eyes still lingered on the empty picture frames on his desk. 

Everyone asked him how he was holding up, if he was doing alright. It drove him mad. Didn’t they know that their concern, however well-meaning, made it worse? That their questions—and their reluctance to put a name to the event—only reminded Hanzo of what was lost?

He spent the day drinking more than he would like to admit. When he had enough to fortify himself, he pulled out the pictures that he had been hiding—the ones from his desk, from the picture frames that used to line the walls of his house. 

Of  _ their _ house. 

After seeing the smoking man, seeing his husband’s face hurt less. That didn’t mean that seeing the two of them smiling together didn’t feel like being stabbed in the chest, though. 

With liquor-numb fingers, Hanzo traced the curve of Jesse’s face, the way his hair was tied behind his head in a messy ponytail. Flyaway wisps were always escaping, surrounding his head in a corona of brown and gold. Though the lines around his eyes and nose and mouth were deepening, his hair was frustratingly free of greys.

Jesse used to tease Hanzo that he had enough grey for the both of them, having started in his late 20’s. He used to call Hanzo’s greys, which had appeared over his ears, his “wings”; they had been, Jesse used to say, his angel’s wings. 

He looked at the bottle next to his elbow, then at the window. At this angle he couldn’t see anything outside except the tops of the trees, but somehow he knew that the man was smoking in his usual spot. 

There was a little left in the bottle so he drained it, feeling the burn of cheap vodka. He gasped when he was done, and capped the bottle. 

He hadn’t drunk enough to be more than tipsy. It was just enough to steel his resolve to do something really stupid.

The man didn’t seem surprised to see him approaching, watching with a slight smile on his face as Hanzo picked his way over the grass, over fallen branches, to reach where he stood beside the trunk of a large pine tree. 

“A year ago, my husband walked into the trees,” Hanzo told the man. “He didn’t come out.” 

The man clicked his tongue. There was almost a smirk on his face that he hid as he took a long drag of his cigar—the very same that Jesse used to smoke. “Bad luck,” he said.

Hanzo searched his too-familiar face. Save the eyes, which were too wild, he was almost an exact replica. “If you wear his face, I guess that means that he’s with you.” 

“Could be,” the man agrees with an ugly laugh. One of his eyes begins to glow a hellish orange. He takes another drag of his cigar and puffs the smoke away—turning his head slightly but not breaking eye contact with Hanzo. 

“What happened to him?” Hanzo asked, the liquor making him bold enough to ask, to stare down whatever creature wore his husband’s face. 

The man laughed again, as if he found the question funny. “Bad luck,” the man said. 

“And me?” Hanzo asked, the boldest question of the afternoon. 

“Your choice,” the man said with a laugh that sounded nothing like his Jesse’s laugh. His eye glittered like hellfire. 

Hanzo turned to look back at the windows of his apartment, then out over the parking lot. He turned back and looked at the darkness between the tree trunks. Sighing, Hanzo began picking his way down a path that didn’t exist between trees that were too dark. He could hear the man behind him turn, laughing. 

“Bad luck,” Hanzo said. “That I had seen you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Stories of the trees and fire and descriptions of the dark area outside of Hanzo's apartment are based on true stories and a real area that I can see from my bedroom window. I have a built-in nightlight because there's a flood light outside my window but it's still creepy as fuck.


End file.
